Thee And Me

  The carriage ride was long and tense, the man's pocket-lining growing hotter with each passing second. His grip on his oaken cane was deathly-tight as his mind calculated everything through once more. He took out the advertisement and looked at it again, wondering if this was going to be worth it. Contradictions ran rampant in his head as he read it thrice-over before ripping it into pieces. If mercy called for it... a quick shake of his head muted that thought.        Peeling open the carriage window, the sounds of echoing bells flooded inside. They seemed to be resounding in every crevice of the streets, every fold of the pavement.        Tennyson had died, and funeral ribbons and bands marked the streets. The day itself seemed to be dressed in a somber veil of fog and rain. Taking in a deep breath, the air was a smell of modern smarts: that this day marked an end to beautiful cricks and infinite daffodils. That space

        Amid the fog of her disenchanted mind, the days blurred together in smudges of grey and white. Sleep became constant torture, and the days were left to nothing more but trying to escape the torment. The mornings were spent walking aimlessly around the ballroom, pretending to look at portraits, or sitting by any window to feel something that wasn't hollow and deeply carved. This sort of weakness was so much easier- of pretending the past was all a dream. Walking around the house, she imagined that everything before she came here was a horrible nightmare. Living like this was like being those ghosts she had seen in town, those people ebbing and flowing like they were small pebbles on a beach. She could be a disenchanted lady of a vacant house instead of the scarred monstrosity she was deep down.          As the month drawled by, she slowly came to sleeping on the bed, but somehow that made

        After that night, everything quickly fell into a lively, comfortable pace; their once stand-offish encounters relaxed and the forced contentment faded. He made the habit of waking up at night listening, his tactically worded questions all skillfully evaded at breakfast and dinner. Hans seemed ever more insistent that she eat red meats and get plenty of nutrition, which she couldn't complain about when crafted by such a skillful cook.         It had been a week since the blood-stained event had taken place, and strangely, she looked all the better since then. Her eyes seemed to shine more and her smile had never been so light and frequent. On the odd days that he didn't vanish for his unknown business to attend to, they sat together in the study having pleasant, perhaps shallow, conversation.         At breakfast, he made a casual comment. &nbs

      The next morning, he awoke to the sounds of Hans setting the dining room table. He had almost forgotten of where he was until he felt the weight of someone on his lap, the scene of last night raw and fresh. He didn't know whether the heaviness on the back of his neck was for his sake or hers- chaos was ravaging his organs. Social etiquette, day-observations; nothing prepared him for things like this.          Gently shaking her arm, Viera woke up and sat up smoothing her hair from her face. Her eyes were out of focus as she took a deep breath, her eyes closing once as she pinched her nose and let a wispy breath out.          "I meant what I said, you know." The faint words almost caused him to jump. For all he knew, she was a traveler between two worlds, and half the time he didn't exist. All he could do was nod, suddenly feeling like he

        The world was soft. It was warm- like a ray of autumn sun. At first, a flash of panic whipped through his veins, the events of yesterday immediately choking out the flames of anxiety. A stressed sigh slipped through his teeth, the faint sound of light breathing causing the tenseness in his stomach to relax. A part of him wanted to stay like this for as long as possible- the deep darkness of the study, the quaint feeling of not waking up alone. It was another luxury that stung his eyes slightly, as if it were a cruel punishment. The mask seemed like it was latched to his face, smothering him- the gloves were a strange medium that numbed the entire world. Every touch, every notion- they were translated through a thick film of fog. If she vanished, he realized he would never know what her hand felt like. He would never see her face un-obstructed. Were there small details he would never see? A small freckle above her brow- a faint hig